Aspartame is an additive found in diet soft drinks
and over 5,000 foods, drugs and medicine. It was approved in 1983 for
use in carbonated beverages. However, there may be more sour than sweet
when it comes to aspartame.

In reality, aspartame is a drug, not an additive
in the sense many people associate with that word. It interacts with other
drugs, has a synergistic and additive effect with MSG, and is a chemical
hyper-sensitization agent. Dr. John Olney, who founded the field of neuoscience
called excitotoxicity, attempted to stop the approval of aspartame with
Attorney James Turner back in 1996. The FDA's own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian
Gross told Congress that without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause
brain tumors and brain cancer and violated the Delaney Amendment which
forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause Cancer. Detailed
information on this can be found in the Bressler Report (FDA report on
Searle).

Dr. Olney isn't alone in attempting to reach out
to the medical community and warn the American people about this drug.
Dr. Ralph Walton, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry,
Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine has written of the
behavioral and psychiatric problems triggered by aspartame-caused depletion
of serotonin.

According to the top doctors and researchers on
this issue, aspartame causes headache, memory loss, seizures, vision loss,
coma and cancer. It worsens or mimics the symptoms of such diseases and
conditions as fibromyalgia, MS, lupus, ADD, diabetes, Alzheimer's, chronic
fatigue and depression. Further dangers highlighted is that aspartame
liberates free methyl alcohol. The resulting chronic methanol poisoning
affects the dopamine system of the brain causing addiction. Methanol,
or wood alcohol, constitutes one third of the aspartame molecule and is
classified as a severe metabolic poison and narcotic.

Dr. Woodrow Monte in the peer reviewed journal,
Aspartame: Methanol and the Public Health, wrote: "When diet sodas
and soft drinks, sweetened with aspartame, are used to replace fluid loss
during exercise and physical exertion in hot climates, the intake of methanol
can exceed 250 mg/day or 32 times the Environmental Protection Agency's
recommended limit of consumption for this cumulative poison."

Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, MD, author of "Excitotoxins:
The Taste That Kills," wrote about the relationship between aspartame
and macular degeneration, diabetic blindness and glaucoma (all known to
result from excitotoxin accumulation in the retina).

The medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored
Epidemic, by Dr. H. J. Roberts is 1038 pages of symptoms and diseases
triggered by this neurotoxin. The claim is made that aspartame has even
caused the epidemic of obesity because it makes you crave carbohydrates
so you gain weight, and the formaldehyde accumulates in the adipose tissue
(fat cells) according to the Trocho Study. Further accusations are that
aspartame is also responsible for the epidemic of diabetes as it not only
can precipitate diabetes but simulates and aggravates diabetic retinopathy
and neuropathy, can cause diabetics to go into convulsions and interacts
with insulin.

The effects of aspartame are documented by the FDA's
own data. In 1995 the agency was forced, under the Freedom of Information
Act, to release a list of ninety-two aspartame symptoms reported by thousands
of victims. It appears this is only the tip of the iceberg. H. J. Roberts,
MD, published the medical text "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic"
-- 1,000 pages of symptoms and diseases triggered by this neurotoxin including
the sordid history of its approval.
[See Video "Sweet
Misery, a Poisoned World"]

Since its discovery in 1965, controversy has raged
over the health risks associated with the sugar substitute. From laboratory
testing of the chemical on rats, researchers have discovered that the
drug induces brain tumors. On Sept 30, 1980 the Board of Inquiry of the
FDA concurred and denied the petition for approval.

In 1981, the newly appointed FDA Commissioner, Arthur
Hull Hayes, ignored the negative ruling and approved aspartame for dry
goods. As recorded in the Congressional Record of 1985, then CEO of Searle
Laboratories Donald Rumsfeld said that he would "call in his markers"
to get aspartame approved. Rumsfeld was on President Reagan's transition
team and a day after taking office appointed Hayes. No FDA Commissioner
in the previous sixteen years had allowed aspartame on the market.

Dr. Betty Martini has worked in the medical field
for 22 years. She is the founder of Mission Possible International, working
with doctors around the world in an effort to remove aspartame from food,
drinks and medicine. According to Dr. Martini, aspartame has brought more
complaints to the American Food and Drug Administration than any other
additive and is responsible for 75% of such complaints to that agency.
From 10,000 consumer complaints FDA compiled a list of 92 symptoms, including
death.

The history of aspartame and its approval has a
political history as well as a scientific one. According to Dr. Martini,

"When Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of Searle, that conglomerate
manufactured aspartame. For 16 years the FDA refused to approve it, not
only because its not safe but because they wanted the company indicted
for fraud. Both U.S. Prosecutors hired on with the defense team and the
statute of limitations expired. They were Sam Skinner and William Conlon.
Skinner went on to become Secretary of Transportation squelching the cries
of the pilots who were now having seizures on this seizure triggering
drug, aspartame, and then Chief of Staff under President Bush's father.
Some of these people reach high places. Even Supreme Justice Clarence
Thomas is a former Monsanto attorney. (Monsanto bought Searle in 1985,
and sold it a few years ago). When Ashcroft became Attorney General, Thompson
from King and Spalding Attorneys (another former Monsanto attorney) became
deputy under Ashcroft. (Attorneys for NutraSweet and Coke).

"However, the FDA still refused to allow NutraSweet
on the market. It is a deadly neurotoxic drug masquerading as an additive.
It interacts with all antidepressants, L-dopa, Coumadin, hormones, insulin,
all cardiac medication, and many others. It also is a chemical hyper sensitization
drug so that it interacts with vaccines, other toxins, other unsafe sweeteners
like Splenda which has a chlorinated base like DDT and can cause auto
immune disease. It has a synergistic and additive effect with MSG. Both
being excitotoxins, the aspartic acid in aspartame, and MSG, the glutamate
people were found using aspartame as the placebo for MSG studies, even
before it was approved. The FDA has known this for a quarter of a century
and done nothing even though its against the law. Searle went on to build
a NutraSweet factory and had $9 million worth of inventory.

"Donald Rumsfeld was on President Reagan's transition
team and the day after he took office he appointed an FDA Commissioner
who would approve aspartame. The FDA set up a Board of Inquiry of the
best scientists they had to offer who said aspartame is not safe and causes
brain tumors, and the petition for approval is hereby revoked. The new
FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, over-ruled that Board of Inquiry
and then went to work for the PR Agency of the manufacturer, Burson-Marstellar,
rumored at $1000.00 a day, and has refused to talk to the press ever since.

"There were three congressional hearings because
of the outcry of the people being poisoned. Senator Orrin Hatch refused
to allow hearings for a long time. The first hearing was in 1985, and
Senator Hatch and others were paid by Monsanto. So the bill by Senator
Metzenbaum never got out of committee. This bill would have put a moratorium
on aspartame, and had the NIH do independent studies on the problems being
seen in the population, interaction with drugs, seizures, what it does
to the fetus and even behavioral problems in children. This is due to
the depletion of serotonin caused by the phenylalanine in aspartame."

According to a press release put out by the National
Justice League on April 26, 2004, lawsuits were filed in three separate
California courts against twelve companies who either produce or use the
artificial sweetener aspartame as a sugar substitute in their products:
Defendants in the lawsuits include Coca-cola, PepsiCo, Bayer Corp., the
Dannon Company, William Wrigley Jr. Company, Walmart, ConAgra Foods, Wyeth,
Inc., The NutraSweet Company, and Altria Corp. (parent company of Kraft
Foods and Philip Morris).

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The suits allege that the food companies committed
fraud and breach of warranty by marketing products to the public such
as diet Coke, diet Pepsi, sugar free gum, Flintstone's vitamins, yogurt
(including Yoplait) and children's aspirin with the full knowledge that
aspartame, the sweetener in them, is neurotoxic.

Dr. Martini recommends that consumers read all labels
on any food, medicine or drinks they intend to consume.

"The effects of aspartame are
documented by the FDA's own data. In 1995 the agency was forced, under
the Freedom of Information Act, to release a list of ninety-two aspartame
symptoms reported by thousands of victims."